Relative Quotes

Value is a relative concept: the value of each action is determined by comparing it with other possible actions.

In a certain way, we're always toggling back and forth between the absolute and the relative, if that makes sense.

A relative of mine ... spends his time producing improved breeds of sheep and pigs and chickens. So patronising and irritating to teh Almighty, I should think.

It is an admitted fact that the ordinary tomtit of commerce has a sounder aesthetic taste than the average female relative in the country.

Are not all finite beings better pleased with motions relative than absolute?

I am afforded a bit of easy wonderment in relative comfort as to how humans have lasted so long. Climate- and geography-wise, the planet seems to have little use for us.

There's no retirement, there's just a few years of non-work by the fire with someone bringing you some tea and relative peace and playing with the grandchildren.

Poverty is such a relative thing; but no man is really poor till life becomes a desert island that gives him neither food nor shelter nor hope.

The call to religion is not a call to be better than your fellows, but to be better than yourself. Religion is relative to the individual.

The criterion for free choice can never be an absolute one, but neither is it entirely relative.

There is a fundamental difference, however, between asking to be permitted to keep a vegetative relative on costly machinery, and asking the taxpayers or society as a whole to pay for such machinery.

Truth is, of course, relative. But then, so is relative.

I also believe that most of the emerging economies have a fairly large amount of foreign exchange reserves, relative to 10 years ago.

Any measurement must take into account the position of the observer. There is no such thing as measurement absolute, there is only measurement relative.

I grew up with a feminist mom and the understanding that, as someone coming from a position of (relative) privilege, it was my job to speak up when things weren't fair.

As big as an elephant is, a whale is still larger. Everything's relative. Even gods have their spot on the food chain.

From that point of view, I realized that my hole was not miles deep after all. My father, in fact, could stand on the bottom and it only reached up to his chest. Darkness, you know, is relative.

Safety is relative. You can be so close to shore that you can practically feel it under your feet, when you suddenly find yourself breaking apart on the rocks.

Set measurable goals, measure relative to competition.

I think the word rich is all relative.

It's very clear that Vladimir Putin has decided that he will eliminate his opponents and anyone who stands up for democracy and freedom. And he does so with relative impunity.

The distance between a gene and a behavior is of greatest interest to me. The relative contributions of nature and nurture, of nucleotide and nuclear family, are perpetually fascinating to me.

It seems strange to make a priori arguments about the relative performance of governments and the markets in health care when there is so much empirical evidence.

The relative majesty of buildings depends more on the weight and vigour of their masses than any other tribute of their design.

I find the surface of a photograph a thing of beauty in and of itself, and it is this surface that makes a photograph unique relative to other two-dimensional media.

Things may move slow in the academic world, but I continue to move at a pace relative to the urgency of the moment, looking forward to the time when the academic world can catch up.

Anytime you bring a really powerful new technology to market there are multiple implications. You start changing the relative position of countries.

What is Thanksgiving without a nutty relative?

Older, you know, is obviously relative. You're older if there's somebody younger than you in the room, and you're younger if there's someone older in the room.

When I first started on Twitter, a relative asked, 'Aren't you concerned with giving away your jokes?' I don't think of it that way. That's my content, and that's what I do.

I don't think that the world will ever become an unpoliced place, sadly. But I do feel that there is relative freedom on the margins.

What I was trying to construct was relative symmetry, where it seems clear that the shapes have arrived through consideration.

Unreasonable is very relative.

Things That Don't Matter When You've Lived the Same Day Six Times and Died on at Least Two of Them: Lunch meats and their relative coolness.

The likely economic effects [of the war in Iraq] would be relatively small... Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite small relative to the economic benefits.

Size is relative. If everyone is fat, no-one is fat

Aristocracy is a relative thing. And there are plenty of out-of-the-way places where the son of an upholsterer is the arbiter of fashion and reigns over a court like any young Prince of Wales.

Freedom, like everything else, is relative.

Some of what we read in classical literature is not relative to our condition, but then many women novelists and poets have turned it upside down and told the stories from the other point of view.

"Another relative?" Valek asked. A broad smile stretched Moon Man's lips. "Yes. I am her mother's uncle's wife's third cousin."

God, the boring relative everyone ignores--no one calls, no one writes--until they need a serious favor.

I didn't grow up with great privilege, nor did I grow up wanting for anything. I was a middle-class kid and, relative to the rest of the world, that's great wealth.

Doom hits the same frequencies that polytonic Buddhist chanting does, which is very hypnotic and makes time relative when listening.

If there's anythin' on earth that can be more tryin' than any kind of relative, I don't know what it is, but relatives by marriage comes first - easy.

In war, moral factors acount for three quarters of the whole; relative material strength accounts for only one quarter.

Value gives the artist the means of showing subtle changes in a form's surface-state, and it helps clarify the relative distance between forms.

There is no greater bugbear than a strong willed relative in the circle of his own connections.

Truth is relative, and there is always something missing in truth that prevents it from being perfect.

Until a friend or relative has applied a particular proverb to your own life, or until you've watched him apply the proverb to his own life, it has no power to sway you.

I believe that we respond most and best to work in any art form (and to other experience as well) if we are pluralistic, flexible, relative in our judgments, if we are electic.